March 28, 2024

Imagine the promise of an Americana video channel that isn’t as basement-level godawful as Country Music Television (a.k.a., pop music with cowboy hats.)  Imagine the interest that was aroused when, three songs into the first viewing of Ditty TVWilly Tea Taylor of The Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit appeared singing one of his solo pieces, “Young When I Left Home.”

[youtube id=”J8t6kB4Ha8w” width=”600″ height=”350″]Taken on its own, “Young When I Left Home” is a sincere, introspective tune about remembrances of younger days.  Taken in the context of Ditty TV, its mentions of a pickup truck, a fishin’ hole and dusty roads, and its sentiments of days long gone get reduced to trivialities amidst all of the other songs that deal with the same subjects; repeated that is, along with countless love songs, each striving to be more banal than the last.

Hicks with Sticks checked out Ditty TV six or seven times in the interest of writing an informed review, but once they played Shawn Mullins‘ “My Stupid Heart,” a love song so insipid that we dare not offend the dear reader by polluting this page with it, we knew we were done with Shitty Ditty TV, which represents soccer mom Americana at its worst.